Ellington

Lillian Naomi McKinney Cooley, who served as vice president of business development for her family's vocational training and management consulting firm, Systems Consultants Associates, Inc., died Friday, July 28, at the age of 84. Tougaloo College's Woodworth Chapel hosted a memorial service for Cooley, who was a member of the chapel for most of her adult life, on Friday, Aug. 18, at 11 a.m.

Cooley was the oldest of Robert Lee and Virginia Christmon McKinney's four children. She was born in Jackson on April 17, 1933. She attended the now-closed Daniel Hand School that was once located on Tougaloo's campus, and then went on to Spelman College, where she graduated with a bachelor's degree in music. She met her husband, William Cooley, during a summer break at Spelman while visiting Connecticut with her aunt, who was a college math professor in North Carolina. The couple married in 1955 after Cooley graduated from Spelman.

After graduating, Cooley taught music in Savannah, Ga., and Columbia, S.C. She began attending the University of Illinois, Champagne-Urbana, in 1959 and graduated with a master's degree in library science. Cooley worked in public and private libraries in Massachusetts, North Dakota and New Jersey, and briefly worked at Blackburn Middle School in Jackson while her husband served a term of duty during the Vietnam War with the U.S. Air Force. After William Cooley retired from the Air Force at the rank of lieutenant colonel, the couple moved to Jackson, where Cooley worked as a librarian for colleges such as Jackson State University, Millsaps College, Mississippi School of Law and Tougaloo College.

Cooley joined the Mississippi Consortium for International Development after she retired as a librarian. The consortium is a collaboration of four Historically Black Colleges and Universities in Mississippi: Alcorn State University, Jackson State University, Mississippi Valley State University and Tougaloo College. The nonprofit manages and implements international-exchange and development-training projects for students at the four universities. Cooley joined Systems Consultants after leaving MCID and held ownership in the Systems Group of Companies.

In addition to her work, Cooley dedicated her time to helping organizations such as the University of Mississippi Medical Center, Hospice Ministries, the Evelyn Gandy for Lt. Gov. Campaign, the Community Foundation of Greater Jackson and the local chapter of Spelman Alumnae Association. She also supported students who participated in Systems' vocational training programs and who attended the colleges at which she worked.

"I've known Lillian Cooley since the 1960s, and her presence, beauty and speech were always overwhelming," Pamela Junior, director of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson, told the Jackson Free Press. "... She was amazing in the way she walked and talked and the way she loved her daughter, Toni. She had a quiet but commanding spirit, and you always knew when she was in the room. She was like family and took me in when I was a neighborhood kid in west Jackson, and she was always so proud of me and always told me so. I'm going to miss the love I always felt from her."

Cooley's surviving relatives include her husband, William Cooley, her daughter, Toni D. Cooley, her brother, Robert E. McKinney, her sisters in law, Thelma Cooley Robinson, Audrey Smith and Mary Allen McKinney, and several cousins, nieces and nephews.